


When Worlds Collide Things Always Explode. Always.

by thewightknight



Category: Marvel, World of Darkness (Games), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Dimension Travel, Gen, Swearing, Were-Creatures, balam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-14
Updated: 2015-07-14
Packaged: 2018-04-09 07:05:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4338683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewightknight/pseuds/thewightknight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Logan had lost count of the number of cells he’d woken up in over the decades.  There were the cold ones, the damp ones, the dark ones, the ones that smelled, and ones that combined some or all of those features.  Any of those cells were always preferable to this kind, though.  This one was clinical.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When Worlds Collide Things Always Explode. Always.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is rated mature for violence. Oh, and language.
> 
> The big bad in this story was the recurring villain from several World of Darkness campaigns that my husband ran between 1997 and 2000. He took us through a medieval storyline where we met him for the first time, and then carried him over to several campaigns in a modern-era game. He stuck with me, obviously. There's a bit of a horror element to this work, which is straight from our gaming sessions too.
> 
> This story happened because at one point during a game session, I got chronic giggles because I tried to picture what 6’7” Jada would look like next to comic book 5’4” Wolverine. (It happened at about 2am, so the thought was super especially funny.) Obviously, that idea stuck with me too, because here it is 15 years later and I’ve finally written what would happen if the two of them met. Anyone that played with me when I was running Jada would agree that maximum chaos and destruction would ensue.
> 
> Oh, and Hugh Jackman has said in interviews that he wants a Wolverine movie that is really a Wolverine movie. Swearing, blood, and all that good stuff from the comics. So I tried to write something like that here.

Logan had lost count of the number of cells he’d woken up in over the decades. There were the cold ones, the damp ones, the dark ones, the ones that smelled, and ones that combined some or all of those features. Any of those cells were always preferable to this kind, though. This one was clinical. The stark white walls hurt his eyes. The raised bed he was laying on, also white, looked a little too much like an examining table for his comfort. One “wall” appeared to be some kind of forcefield. The other three were metal, and strongly electrified, as he was quick to discover.

When he woke up the next time, he was lying on his back on the floor staring up at the white ceiling. The gouges in the walls taunted him, but at least part of the room wasn’t white anymore. Okay. Time to test that forcefield. 

The room outside his cell was white also, except for the lens of a video camera that swept the area continuously. He was sure there were other cells to either side of his but he couldn’t see into them. The forcefield was a subliminal hum, and when he got too close the pitch rose. It was probably a warning. He didn’t have a good track record at listening to warnings, though. Gathering himself, he prepared to throw himself at the forcefield when a voice broke the silence.

“I don’t suggest doing that. It’ll hurt. A lot.”

He still couldn’t see into the cells next to him, but he got a sense of movement from the one on his left. The occupant seemed to be pacing.

“Unless you like pain, of course. Then be my guest.”

The voice was deep, rumbling, but definitely female. There was a trace of an accent. Spanish, maybe?

“How long’ve I been here?”

“They dragged you in twenty two hours, seventeen minutes ago. Give or take.” 

He grunted. He’d missed checking in. There was no telling how soon the rest of the team would finish up with that mess in Louisiana and be able to head in this direction. He’d be damned if he’d let Scott rescue him. He could see the bastard smirking already.

“Any ideas on gettin’ out of here?”

“Yes, but they are listening, so it’s best not to discuss them.”

“Great.”

“Great indeed,” his invisible companion threw back. Logan couldn’t help but grin, shaking his head. He was starting to like whoever was on the other end of that voice.

“What are they doin’ here, anyways?”

“You didn’t know before you came charging in?”

He started to explain how the Professor had noticed something odd, but couldn’t get a fix on it, and he’d been in the area, so he’d volunteered to check things out, then remembered her warning about listeners. No use letting them know how much in the dark he was, so he kept it simple.

“Not all the specifics, no, but we didn’t think a look’d hurt. Care to fill in the blanks?”

He sensed her pacing intensify. “The fools reach across dimensions and attempt to strike a bargain with a being outside their ken. They are so scared of those different from them here that they would bring the worst evil of my world into yours.”

He let that sink in for a minute. “So you’re sayin’ you’re from another dimension?” She grunted in assent. Great. The Professor totally owed him for this one. “Exactly what kind of being are we talkin’ about here?”

“He has many names. The Defiler. The Destroyer. The Lord of Filth. He is a powerful servant of the Wyrm, and spreads corruption wherever he goes. My ancestors battled him centuries ago, and although you may find this hard to believe, in my world I myself have chased him from the present day into the future and back again. He has only grown stronger as the world has advanced and industry lays waste to nature. From the little I have seen of your world, he will thrive even more here, as your people do not have the talents to combat him. It is idiocy for them try to strike a bargain with him.” Her voice got louder the longer she spoke, and he was pretty sure those last couple of sentences weren’t meant for him.

“So you’re sayin’ he’s bad news, then?”

There was a pause, and then she laughed, a wry chuckle. “I am indeed.”

“Well then. We should probably get out of here and do somethin’ about them.” He eyed the walls again. What the hell. It was only pain.

“Bide awhile before you do yourself more harm, friend,” the voice cautioned. Was mind reading a talent in her dimension? 

“I should warn you. I’m not a very patient person.” He turned, scanning the walls again, trying to decide if one spot looked weaker than the others, but they were equally nondescript and seamless. Might as well go for the same spot as last time. He made a fist, steeling himself as always against the pain as his claws cut through the skin on his knuckles, then drew his fist back, preparing to punch the wall. Before he could strike the power flickered. There was a split second dimming of the lights, the power stabilized for a count of three, and then everything went completely black just long enough for him to blink. 

The hum of the forcefield turned into a screech, and out of the corner of his eye he saw a figure stagger forward. He got an impression of black leather and hair as his cellmate surged forward, reaching out and ripping the camera from the ceiling. She then collapsed in a heap, panting. He started forward to help, but his forcefield had snapped back into place as soon as the lights came back on, so he was forced to stare as the woman from another dimension panted and shook. 

It took less than a minute for her breathing to settle, then she reached out, pushing against the wall as she rose. And rose and rose. Damn. He thought he’d gotten used to feeling short, but this was ridiculous. The top of his hair might clear her shoulders if they were standing next to each other, he supposed. 

His brain finally got past “BIG” and he took in more details. Black hair, braided, fell almost to her knees, weighed down by a silver ball at the end. Olive skin. Clad in a pair of leather pants and a simple black tank. Not only was she a giant, she looked to be one giant muscle. Things were looking up. True, he had gotten captured by mad scientists trying to bring evil monsters through from another dimension, but he’d gotten a winner for a cellmate. 

She gave one final shudder, shrugging off the last effects of the forcefield like a cat shaking water out of its fur and turned to face him. Olive skin. Green eyes. Eye, he amended as she finished turning, facing him fully. A patch covered her right eye and the right side of her face was covered in pockmarked scars. She had olive skin, angular features. Looked South American maybe. 

Logan realized she’d been completely silent since the power flickered. He started to speak, and she raised her fingers to her lips, made a cupping motion next to her ears. Oh, yeah, right. Listeners. She closed her eyes, head turning to and fro, then padded noiselessly out of his range of vision. He eyed the remains of the camera while he waited. She hadn’t even had to stretch to tear it off the ceiling. 

The silence continued. He got as close to the forcefield as he dared, and could just make her out, standing to his right, hands flat against the wall. Patience, he reminded himself. Without warning a wave of electronic feedback ripped through the room, a high pitched squealing at painful levels, then silence again. His head pounded after it faded, but it hadn’t seem to faze the woman at all. She turned and approached his cell. Seeing him for the first time, one eyebrow twitched, and he waited for the inevitable joke about his height. She surprised him, though, saying nothing, laying her palm against the wall next to the forcefield, frowning in concentration. In a few seconds, the hum disappeared. Cautiously, he reached out, meeting nothing but air, and she grinned. Her teeth were pointed, he noticed, the canines especially.

“Excellent. With the silence, our captors will think the camera and sound both died with the power surge.”

“Won’t they come check on us?”

“Not immediately. The surge happens when they begin to power up the machine that reaches into my world. They will not be concerned about us for a short time.”

“They been doin’ lots of these tests?”

“I have only been here for ten days. This is the first time they have attempted to fully power their machines and make contact again since my arrival. There were mutterings about alignments and correspondences and other things beyond my ken.”

“Okay, then. What’s the plan?”

“My plan is to make my way to the center of this facility and destroy their machine and all records of its creation, killing any and all who attempt to bar my passage.”

Logan smiled. “Good plan.” Yep. He liked this woman. He stuck out his hand in introduction. “Logan.”

She clasped it, giving it a brisk pump. “Jada.”

There was a keypad next to the door leading out from their containment area, locking the door. Jada placed her palm on the pad again, closing her eyes, but after a few moments she murmured something too soft for him to hear and let her hand drop. 

“Allow me,” Logan offered. The door wasn’t electrified, at least. Her eye widened briefly at his claws, and then she bowed slightly to him before pushing the door open. It led into a short corridor, with another door at the end. Before he could slice his way through this one too, Jada put up a hand. She leaned in, listening at the door. Now that he was paying attention, he could hear voices from the next room, although the words weren’t clear. She straightened, and gestured. One finger, pointed towards him, then two fingers, and she pointed through the door and then to herself. The door handle started to turn, and he nodded. 

When door swung open Jada reached through, grabbing the man behind it and throwing him into the hallway towards Logan, then charged into the room. He hoped the man had always wanted to fly. He made a nice thud when he hit the ceiling, anyways. There was a strangled scream and two thuds, and by the time he made it through the door the other two guards were down, one minus a throat and the other with his head twisted backwards. There were a bank of monitors on the wall in front of him. One screen in the center row showed a black screen. 

“These ones were just reporting that our camera was down and they were going to check on us. Someone will be expecting them to report back shortly.”

“Party’s on, then?”

She grinned. “Indeed.” She scanned the monitors, then pointed to two screens in quick succession. The first showed a storage room filled with crates and shelving. The second showed a room filled with computers and science-y types in white lab coats running around. “My equipment and weapons are here. We need to destroy here.”

“What kind of weapons? The guards will probably have guns.”

“But they will most likely not have bricks of C-4 and detonators.”

“Okay. Weapons first. Then destroy. Check. Where’s this room anyways?”

She tapped the monitor. Each display had a black bar with text scrolling across the bottom of the screen. The room was labeled as “main storage – A level.” The black screen from the former camera in the cell room said “Holding area – A level.”

“Any idea how big this place is?”

“It goes down.” She tapped on the other monitor, “I know from listening to those who came to question me that this we are below ground. I do not know how many levels there are, as I was unconscious when they brought me to my cell.”

“Okay, find the storage room, then find the stairs.”

“Or we could ask this nice man.” She pointed to another screen, labeled “Level A Main Hall,” showing another guy in a uniform walking through the hallway. “I’m sure he’ll be happy to give us all the information we need. I am very good at asking people things.” She smiled again, a feral grin that Logan returned. 

“Looks like the main corridor is circular. Makes sense – the building was round from the outside.” As they watched, the man spoke into the mike clipped to his shoulder. His voice issued from the mike on the body of the guard with the backwards head. 

“So what’s the word? All quiet in there?” 

Jada looked down, looked back up at Logan, and shrugged. “It looks like our timeline may need to be sped up.”

The mike crackled again. “Damnit Jack, I told you to stop screwing around. If I come in there and you shits are having me on again, you are going to lose teeth. I shit you not.” 

“Or not,” Logan replied, watching as the man headed towards the next camera, then stopped outside a door. This time they heard his voice coming through the other door to the security station as well as through the mike. The two of them took up positions on either side of the door. 

The guard continued to speak as he turned the handle. “I swear I’m going to beat the snot out of you, you ass….”

He never got to finish his sentence. Damn, that woman was fast. She had one hand around his neck, pinning him back against the wall, while she ripped his gun from his holster with the other. His hands scrabbled against hers as she raised him up until his feet dangled a foot above the floor.

“Hello there,” she purred, ignoring his struggles. “We would like you to tell us a bit about this place.”

“Fuck you,” he managed to choke out, and she tightened her grip, cutting off his air briefly.

“I will make this simple for you. You will describe the layout of this place to us and I will let you go. You will then leave this place immediately and give thanks that you were a reasonable man and did not force me to kill you horribly.” 

She loosened her grip and he took a gasping breath, then spat in her face. “Fuck off.”

“Let me repeat myself.” She took a deep breath, and started to change. Short black hair flowed over her exposed skin and her face elongated, teeth sharp and bright. Her hands sprouted curved claws. Her body grew in both height and mass, and as she grew the distance between the man’s feet and the ground grew too. Logan did a double-take. Yep, she’d grown a tail, too. 

“Describe the layout of this place and I will not be forced to kill you horribly. You will leave this place alive once we are through with you.” Her voice had deepened and roughened, with an extra helping of growl. Without looking she handed the guard’s gun to Logan, and when he took it, she caressed the guard’s cheek with a clawed finger, dimpling the skin but not drawing blood.

The guy pissed himself. Logan thought that was an understandable reaction. He put Jada at about eight feet tall now, and her shoulders were twice as wide as the dumbass. Her hand now reached completely around his neck, and that claw was as long as a finger. The guy started talking before his piss hit the floor.

They had the layout from him in under a minute. Main storage was two doors to the left. Stairs were just past the storage room. There were three levels below ground and three above. Levels B and C below them were generators. Normally there’d people be on all the aboveground levels, but today was supposed to a big day so there’d be a just skeleton crew on one, and everyone else would be on three. The dead guards’ badges would get us into both the stairwells and the elevator. All the cameras fed to this room. Shift change was in two hours. The guard didn’t want to die. He really really didn’t want to die. 

Jada made soothing noises at him, patting his face. When he stopped talking she lowered him until his feet touched the floor but didn’t let go of his neck right away. She leaned in until her nose brushed the man’s hair, and took a deep breath. “I have your scent, man. I’m giving you the chance to walk away and live. If I find you later in those fighting us, you will wish I had killed you now. Do you understand?”

The man whimpered, nodding. 

“Good.” She dropped him and he sprinted for the door. They could his footsteps pounding down the hallway. They each helped themselves to the dead guards’ badges and guns. Neither had any ammo except what was in the clips. 

“There were none with automatic weapons when I was first taken but I have seen some since. Even weakened as I was when I arrived here I still managed considerable mischief.”

She hadn’t shrunk back down again, and Logan’s neck was starting to ache from looking up at her. “So do you get any bigger?” he couldn’t help asking. She was a mixture of big cat and human features now, the pupil of her single eye slitted. 

“Yes, but I would have problems fitting through doorways. Best to save it until we reach our goal.” She checked the monitors one more time. The hallway camera was clear, and she gestured towards the door. “After you.”

Logan led the way out into the hall. He didn’t hear anything behind him, and when he looked back to see if Jada was following she was human-sized again. Well, giant human sized anyways. They hadn’t seen any signs of other guards patrolling the hallway. The door to the storage room wasn’t locked, and she started throwing open crates while he stood guard, watching the corridor. 

“Here,” she called out, and when he looked her way she threw his jacket to him. 

“What, it smells like me?”

“Yes, but I am not finding anything else that does. Did you have weapons or gear?” Sheesh. He’d been joking.

“Nope. I’m my own weapon.”

She snorted, a disgusted sound.

“What? I heal fast.”

“I do as well, but that does not mean I go out of my way to get hit.”

She’d found her gear too. First she strapped on a wicked-looking knife, then two handguns in a shoulder holster, and a bandolier of clips. Another bandolier of throwing knives followed. The harnesses looked like a mixture of leather and spandex – there was definitely some stretch in everything. On top of the gear she added a leather coat. The way it hung, there must be armor plates sewn in. Reaching into a pocket of the coat she pulled out a necklace. The pendant looked like carved wood, some kind of deer. She clasped it around her neck, then flexed shrugged, checking that everything had settled to her satisfaction. Finally, she pulled out a satchel, looked inside and smiled.

Damn, she looked badass. He was staring, mouth open, he realized, snapping it shut as she looked up. 

“I’ve been told this is called ‘armed for bear’ in my world. Do you have a similar saying?”

“Yeah, I’d say that’s about right.”

She closed the satchel and slung it across her shoulder. 

“Let us go find us some bears then.”

They didn’t run into anyone else on A level, but some poor sap decided to take the stairs down from the ground floor. He went all the way down to C with one of Jada’s throwing knives in his throat. They followed him down, but slower. There were five guys who were probably supposed to be watching dials and gauges, but they were holed up in a closet playing poker instead. That made it easy. 

The satchel she was carrying had a lot of C-4 in it. It was the size thing again, because the bag was actually pretty big but with her carrying it, it looked like one of those stupid European man-purses. They started wedging bricks into important looking spots. Jada had timers for the detonators. 

“Twenty minutes? We should make it. We might need to leave from a window, though.” 

“I’ll live.”

“That is the plan, yes.”

Something had been bothering him, and he finally realized what it was. “If we blow this place, how’re you gonna get home?”

She paused, looked down. “The portal they have built opens into the heart of the Defiler’s domain. If I return through it, I am dead. I should be dead already. My companions were when he cast me through it into your world, or at least I hope they were. Sending me through was a test, he said, to see if passage was possible. I do not wish to leave my world behind, or at his mercy, but do not see a point in throwing my life away. And I have hope that the destruction we create here will have an effect in his realm as well.”

“Fair enough. If we’re only gonna get twenty minutes, we better get movin’.”

“Truly. I will worry about what to do next after we live through this, yes?”

They ended up giving themselves twenty-five minutes on the timers on the bottom level, and set the ones on B level at twenty. They skipped A level and headed up the stairs to the ground floor.

The stairs let out into another hallway, with empty offices on either side. The door at the end of the hallway opened to the lobby, all plate glass and stainless steel and a security desk with screens that monitored the roads and woods around the building. He hadn’t noticed the cameras when he’d been scouting around. It looked like they’d been watching him when he parked his bike (well, Scott’s bike) and tried to sneak up to the place through the trees. The bike was still sitting where he’d left it, at least. 

The uniform at the desk noticed them – must have seen a reflection in the glass, or maybe he spooked because the other guy hadn’t come back. Whatever it was, he went for the alarm button and another one of Jada’s knives pinned his hand to the counter. He wouldn’t give up, though – reached across to try to slap it with his other hand. 

One moment Jada was standing next to Logan in the hall. The next moment she was standing over the other guy’s body, slumped over the desk with his head twisted pretty much off. He still had no clue just what she was, but if they were all fast-healing shapeshifting supersized speed freaks in her world he didn’t want to take a vacation over there.

There didn’t seem to be anyone else on this floor, so they set some more charges along the hallway and kept moving up. Second floor was all cubicles and computers, with a huge server setup in the center. They wired a bunch of bricks together with an overkill of blasting caps and slapped them onto the server bank. He started to notice a low hum, a subliminal vibration in the floor, as they were working.

“How much time we got left?” They had to be getting close to detonation, Logan thought. 

“Nine and a half minutes in … mark.”

She wasn’t wearing a watch. “How do you do that?”

“Sheer talent.”

“Right.”

“I believe the elevator opens up in the center of the top floor. I think it best we take the stairs so we can get some idea of the situation before we begin to cause mayhem. Their portal should be opening soon. I will arm the C-4 with a detonator. If they have made contact again, I will attempt to disrupt the portal before the Defiler can enter your world. This should draw the attention of all to me. If you would, focus on destroying what equipment you can reach, then throw the bag at the portal and take the nearest window out. I will trigger the detonator as we leap.”

“You’ll be okay with jumpin’ from three stories up?”

“Oh yes. I always land on my feet.”

Cat jokes. Of course she made cat jokes. He chuckled. 

She said she was going to prime all the C-4 she had left, but instead she split it in two, one half larger than the other. She primed the bigger piece for remote, tucking the detonator into a pouch on one of her bandoliers. The smaller piece got a timer. She set it for 30 seconds, but didn’t activate it.

“When the portal opens, there should be three pedestals next to the Defiler’s throne. There will be an object on each of the pedestals. These are foci, and help him channel his powers. We were trying to separate him from them when my friends and I were taken. We had thought him away from his stronghold, and that we could spirit them away and weaken him. It was a trap.” Her face twisted. “It is likely that my friends are not yet dead, for he loves nothing more than to inflict pain.” She weighed the brick with the timer in her hand. “I mean to throw this through the portal first and release them from his torments, possibly damaging his foci in the process. After that, we must destroy the portal.” 

He didn’t know what to say to that, so he just nodded.

She slid the bag off her shoulder, put the larger chunk of C-4 back in it, and handed it to Logan. 

“This will not adjust with me when I change. Will you keep it safe?”

Change? Right. Okay. He nodded, took the bag, slinging it across his chest. 

“When we hit the top of the stairs we will have two and a half minutes, give or take, before the timers detonate.”

“Let’s do this then.”

The hum increased in volume as they climbed, and the walls were starting to shake. The door at the top of the stair was rattling in its frame when they reached it, and most of the equipment on the other side of it was complaining too. Between that and the excited chatter of the labcoats, the little noise they made when they eased through was a drop in the bucket. 

The portal dominated the room, a bunch of equipment behind a platform and a metal pole at each corner of the platform. This floor had twenty-foot ceilings, and the poles reached almost all the way up. The air between them shimmered and bolts of something were pulsing between the poles. It made Logan’s head hurt more and his stomach churn on top of it. The colors were just wrong, and you could almost see things in the rippling air at the center of platform.

All the scientists were bustling around, checking their readouts. Between them and the platform was a row of guys in uniforms. They all had handguns. No automatic weapons in sight. Made sense, he guessed. These guys’d probably get in trouble if they shot up the equipment too much. Well, if they weren’t going to do it. 

No one was paying any attention to the back of the room. He turned to Jada, checking to see if she was ready. 

She nodded, took a deep breath and started growing again. This time he managed to keep his jaw off his chest as she shot up. And up and up and up. Christ. She had to be twice his height now. He’d be staring at her belt buckle if he hadn’t been looking up and if she’d been wearing a belt.

She was still standing on two legs, but that was the only human-looking thing left about her. Her clothes melted into her fur, leaving her with nothing but the bandoliers and holsters. Okay, now the stretchy stuff made sense. Left him wondering what happened to her clothing, though. Her eyepatch had disappeared too, but instead of an empty socket a faceted green stone stared out. It tracked with her other eye, too. That was kind of cool. 

She smiled, now with extra pointy teeth, and gave him two thumbs up. Before he could respond, the hum turned into an eardrum-shattering squeal and they both covered their eyes as a blinding light exploded from the platform. When they could see again, they weren’t looking at the equipment on the far wall anymore. Instead, they were staring at, well, a really creepy looking throne room. 

“They want to partner up with this guy?” he growled as he took it all in – the freaky looking naked guy sitting on a throne made up of bones and skulls, feet propped up on a footstool that looked like a deformed body, all of it on a dais draped with what looked like tanned human skins with the faces still in them. He hoped it was the distortion from the portal that made the faces look like they were screaming. Was his footstool moving too? Fuck. From the look on Jada’s face, those were her friends. 

There were those focus things, too, on either side of creepy guy’s throne. It’s a good thing he didn’t have time to pay attention to them, because his head was hurting enough already.

That was all the time he had for detail, because Jada charged. It took a few seconds for anyone to notice, because they were so focused on the portal. The freaky guy saw her right away and pointed, and heads turned. The labcoats scattered, and all the uniforms pointed their guns at her. The first couple of shots missed, and one of the coats screamed at them. 

“Don’t damage the portal, fools!” 

Jada kept charging the platform. Some of the uniforms were better shots, but the bullets didn’t seem to faze her. She plowed through their line like they were bowling pins and hit one of the poles hard. The metal shrieked and the pole buckled. As she hit, she threw the C-4, and it passed through the portal, flying past creepy guy and bouncing off one of the human drapes. 

Logan started counting backwards from twenty, since he figured she’d triggered the timer as she was running. Most of the people were converging on Jada, so he concentrated on smashing equipment. He’d got to nine when the pole gave, starting to fall inwards towards the center of the pedestal. The portal started to flicker, which made what was happening on the other side look like some supernatural horror movie. 

The creepy guy was shouting something. Logan couldn’t make out the words, but damnit he was really getting tired of how everything was making his head hurt. Some of the scientists dropped to their knees, hands clapped to their ears. Looked like some of them were leaking blood. Heh. Seemed a few of them were starting to realize they’d maybe done something kind of stupid. Shame it hadn’t happened sooner.

Turns out the big guy was yelling because his drape people had somehow fallen forward over him, tangling him up, and as he watched the footstool stood, shifting as it moved. It morphed into a big wolfman-looking guy (so they’re not all cats over there?), who tottered over to one of the pedestals, grabbing the object there. It howled when it touched the whatever it was, and its body started to, well, melt, but it managed to push itself, leaping, through the portal just as it collapsed. 

They were almost out of time, he was sure. Logan threw the bag towards the platform and yelled. “Time to go!”

Jada hesitated for a moment, pausing next to what used to be her friend, a bubbling mass wrapped around the scary object from another dimension. “Go,” it somehow croaked. “It is a good death.” She nodded, then took off running. She had her super speed thing turned on again, passed him like he was standing still. When she hit the window she pulverized the glass. There wasn’t a piece left in the frame when he jumped out after her. The blast from behind as the C-4 detonated rocketed him forward as he started to fall.

He didn’t actually remember hitting the ground. He just woke up to a growl and a bunch of familiar voices yelling. Why did they have to be yelling? His head still hurt. It took him a second, but then there was a blast, and a cat-sounding roar. Crap. He recognized that blast. Cyclops. 

Opening his eyes, he took in the scene. Scott and Kurt were facing off against Jada. She was still all big and hairy, and her fur was smoking, and she was standing in between him and them, all snarl and claws. Scott had his hand up to his visor, and Jada was getting ready to charge him. He pushed himself up and stumbled in between them, hands raised.

“Jada. It’s okay. They’re on our side.”

“Who’s …?” Scott trailed off, incredulous, as Jada shifted down.

“This is a friend of yours, Logan?” 

Logan grinned. “I wouldn’t call him a friend, but he’s on our side.”

Jada raised an eyebrow, and the corners of her mouth twitched. Then her eyes focused on something behind him and she swore. “Hijo de perra!”

He turned and looked, and whistled. There had been a building behind him, all modern stainless steel and glass in the center of a parking lot. Now there was a crater just about the size of the parking lot. As they watched, the one remaining car teetered on the edge, then fell down into the pit.

“The explosives must have been augmented by the Defiler’s focus. I do not think we need worry about any of your scientists’ research surviving.”

“Yeah, you can say that again.” Now that he was standing, his body started letting him know that everything hurt.

Kurt bamph’ed over to the edge of the crater, looked down, and popped back to where they were standing. “The bottom of the crater is molten.” Whatever he said next was drowned out as the car exploded.

“We’d better get out of here before someone comes to check out your mess. Professor said you were just scouting out here.”

“Yeah, well, shit escalated.” He turned to Jada. “You’d better come with us. I know the Professor will want to ask you about these guys, and we know a couple of fellas that might have an idea how to get you home. If nothing else, you can rest up a bit and get a feel for things here.” He knew Reed owed them all a favor or three for some of his messes they’d helped clean up.

She wasn’t looking at him, he realized. She and Scott were having a staring contest. If she’d been in cat form, her fur’d probably be all spiky, and Scott hadn’t taken his hand down from his visor yet.

“Problem, little man?” she purred, and Scott tensed.

“Hey!” He snapped his fingers between them. “Crater. Us. Move. Right? You bring the jet?” he asked Scott. “Oh, yeah, we’d better pick up your bike.”

“Son of a bitch!”

**Author's Note:**

> A couple of game-play things. Jada was my character - a Balam, and born as a jaguar, not human. She's a black panther, and this picture's of a jaguar, but the five forms would still be the same as in the link here:  
> [Balam 5 forms](http://tacimur.deviantart.com/art/Balam-5-forms-283798623) by [Tacimur](http://tacimur.deviantart.com/) on [DeviantArt](http://www.deviantart.com)
> 
> She had the huge size merit, and during one campaign she ran afoul of a claymore (the exploding kind, not the Scottish greatsword kind), which is where she lost the eye. The emerald eye mentioned in this story was part of her payment at the end of that campaign. It has some fun properties that aren’t relevant for this story. I was usually the only playing a were creature in a party of vampires, so my husband used DM magic to create a talisman for me, the Hooves of the Impala, that basically gave me celerity.
> 
> Feel free to come say hi over on [tumblr](http://thewightknight.tumblr.com/).


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